Workbench

06/19/2006

Too Bad Voters Can't Change Their Minds the Way Politicians Can

Brian Bilbray, the Republican who made headlines by eeking-out a slim victory in Duke Cunningham's previously safe Republican district, won because he ran as an old-timey, cut-the-spending conservative. He promised to break the cycle of pork barreling that has turned President Bush's tenure in the White House into an orgy of spending beyond even that conceived by Lyndon Johnson. Among the applause lines frequently used by Bilbray was a pledge to vote against earmarks, the primary mechanism of pork barrel spending. Bilbray especially condemned earmarks added secretly in Conference Committee.

Admirably, once elected the courageous Bilbray held to his solemn pledge for a whole week. Then he succumbed to what must have been enormous pressure, voting for the first pork-laden spending bill that crossed his desk. Bilbray's vote seemed, according to the understated conservative Club For Growth, to "contradict what he said while trying to get elected."

That is, he voted with the rest of the self congradulatory Republican "conservatives" for a bill nicknamed T-THUD which contained more than 1,500 earmarks. Those earmarks were added beyond the scruitiny of the public, as the Senate and House bills were reconciled in Conference.

In other words, at the first opportunity Bilbray abandoned a basic plank of his campaign platform and did exactly what he promised not to do.